A Primer on Priming Your Coils

I’m sure you’ve heard the term ‘Priming a coil' but what does that mean exactly? Many new vapers haven’t learned this technique, and even some long-term vapers may have some questions as to the best practice in which to do it. So, lets take a step by step look at how to prime a new coil, and learn the reason behind it.

Why do we prime coils in the first place? Well, the main answer is that we want the cotton in the coils to soak up some juice, so that we don’t get a burnt cotton taste. The cotton will also get a better initial soak this way because you have better access to it from the top like this than juice only being able to soak up from the bottom. In any case, it’s just about avoiding a dry hit, and the awful taste that brings.You may be surprised that the priming process goes farther than just wetting the cotton. I believe a coil is fully primed once you can resume vaping at your normal desired wattage. I’ll explain that in greater detail below.

So, you have a fresh coil ready to put into your tank. If you just bought a tank, and haven’t put juice in it yet, you can take that coil out, and follow along from here. If you’re not sure how to change coils in your tank, feel free to YouTube that before proceeding. It’s super easy, and if you get stuck, you can also ask your local vape store staff member like Val here : )

Step One: Take the eliquid you are going to be using and start dripping a bit around the top of the coil letting slowly soak up the juice. You can tell if it starts running down that you’re going too fast. Just apply it slowly, drops at a time if you need to. You’ll get habituated after a couple of times to your coils ‘soak speed’ if I can dare attempt to coin a phrase here. Eventually the cotton will be soaked all the way down. You’ll know which parts are wet as the cotton turns a darker color.

Step Two: After you see the cotton is good and damp (again – not leaking from the coil, just damp), you can screw the coil back into the tank base and re-assemble the tank. Now you want to fill the tank up with your juice. That’s it for step two. We’re half way through!

Step Three: Once your tank is filled, you can take some ‘unpowered pulls’, meaning suck on the tip, without pushing the power button. This helps pull some more juice into the coil section, without firing the coils. We are basically just adding more saturation here. Don’t go overboard though. Too much juice equals a flooded coil. If this happens you may hear the eliquid popping, and get some juice in your mouth – commonly referred to as “spit back”. The simple fix for that is too increase the wattage a bit or to take longer drags to burn off any excess juice.

Step Four: Once you’ve completed the first three steps, it is time to actually vape on this new coil. Go ahead and decrease your watts a bit if you have a variable wattage device. If you don’t have that ability, then you’re good to go. Maybe just take some shorter drags for the first ten times. If you do have control over your wattage, try going down at least ten watts. For myself at 120watts, I go down 20 watts on a new coil. Then after a few minutes, I go up in increments of five watts every 10 drags. Once you are back at your standard wattage using this method, I would consider the new coil in full working order.

Even given these steps you still might notice a bit of a cotton taste with fresh coils. This is just part of the gig; but has gotten a lot better over the years.

That's it! Pretty simple really. Just follow these steps whenever its time to switch out coils, and you'll have a much better experience not waiting for that awful cotton taste to go away.. Enjoy the fresh taste of success!